Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Totally Explained

Everything about Australian Security Intelligence Organisation totally explained

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) is the domestic counter-intelligence and security agency of Australia which is responsible for the protection of the country and its citizens from espionage, sabotage (especially sabotage of critical infrastructure), politically-motivated violence, attacks on the Australian defence system, terrorism and acts of foreign interference.
ASIO is comparable to the United Kingdom Security Service (MI5). As with MI5 officers, ASIO officers have no police powers of arrest and are not armed. ASIO operations requiring police powers are co-ordinated with the Australian Federal Police or with State and Territory police forces.

Command, control and organisation

ASIO is a statutory body under the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1979 and is responsible to the Parliament of Australia through the Attorney-General. The Organisation also reports to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, and is subject to independent review by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. The head of ASIO is the Director-General of Security, who oversees the strategic management of ASIO within guidelines issued by the Attorney-General. The current Director-General is Paul O'Sullivan, appointed in 2005.
At present, ASIO has a staff of over 1300 personnel. This number is expected to grow to some 1860 by 2011. The identity of ASIO officers, apart from the Director-General, remain an official secret. Furthermore, ASIO has undergone a period of rapid growth with some 70% of the Organisation's officers having joined since 2002, leading to what the Director-General calls 'an experience gap'.

Powers and accountability

Special investigative powers

The special investigative powers available to ASIO officers under warrant signed by the Attorney-General include: A classified annual report is also provided to the government, an unclassified edited version of which is tabled in Federal Parliament.
Subsequently, on 16 March 1949, Prime Minister Ben Chifley issued a Directive for the Establishment and Maintenance of a Security Service, appointing South Australian Supreme Court Justice Geoffrey Reed as the first Director-General of Security. In August 1949, Justice Reed advised the Prime Minister that he'd decided to name the service the 'Australian Security Intelligence Organization' [sic] (the spelling was amended in 1999 to bring it into line with the Australian standard form 'organisation'). The new service was to be modelled on the Security Service of the United Kingdom and an MI5 liaison team was attached to the fledgling ASIO during the early 1950s. Historian Robert Manne describes this early relationship as “special, almost filial” and continues “ASIO’s trust in the British counter-intelligence service appears to have been near-perfect”. Among the prime suspects of the investigations were Wally Clayton, a prominent member of the Australian Communist Party, and two diplomats with the Department of External Affairs, Jim Hill and Ian Milner. However, no charges resulted from the investigations, because Australia didn't have any laws against peacetime espionage at the time.
On 6 July 1950 the Charter of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization was defined by the directive of Prime Minister Robert Menzies following the appointment of Colonel Charles Spry as the new Director-General. ASIO was converted to a statutory body on 13 December 1956 through the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1956 (repealed by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1979, the current legislation as amended to 2007).

The Petrov Affair

5 February 1951 saw the arrival in Sydney of Vladimir Mikhaylovich Petrov, Third Secretary of the Soviet Embassy. An ASIO field officer identified Petrov as a possible 'legal', an agent of the Soviet Ministry of State Security (MGB, a forerunner to the KGB) operating under diplomatic immunity. The Organisation began gently cultivating Petrov through another agent, Dr. Michael Bialoguski, with the eventual goal of orchestrating his defection. Ultimately, Petrov would be accused by the Soviet Ambassador of several lapses in judgement that would have led to his imprisonment and probable execution upon his return to the Soviet Union. Petrov feared for his life and grabbed the defection life-line thrown him by ASIO.
   The actual defection occurred on 3 April 1954. Petrov was spirited to a safe house by ASIO officers, but his disappearance and the seeming reluctance of Australian authorities to search for him made the Soviets increasingly suspicious. Fearing a defection by Petrov, MVD officers dramatically escorted his wife Evdokia to an awaiting aeroplane in Sydney. There was doubt as to whether she was leaving by choice or through coercion and so Australian authorities initially didn't act to prevent her being bundled into the plane. However, ASIO was in communication with the pilot and learned through relayed conversations with a flight attendant that if Evdokia spoke to her husband she might consider seeking asylum in Australia.
   An opportunity to allow her to speak with her husband came when the Director-General of Security, Charles Spry, was informed that the MVD agents had broken Australian law by carrying firearms on an airliner in Australian airspace and so could be detained. When the aeroplane landed in Darwin for refuelling, the Soviet party and other passengers were asked to leave the plane. Police, acting on ASIO orders, quickly disarmed and restrained the two MVD officers and Evdokia was taken into the terminal to speak to her husband via telephone. After speaking to him, she became convinced he was alive and speaking freely and asked the Administrator of the Northern Territory for political asylum.
   The affair sparked controversy in Australia when circumstantial links were noted between the leader of the Australian Labor Party and the Communist Party of Australia (and hence to the Soviet spy ring). H.V. Evatt, the leader of the Labor Party at the time, accused Prime Minister Robert Menzies of arranging the Petrov defection to discredit him. The accusations lead to a disastrous split in the Labor party. Due to the close defence and intelligence ties between Australia and the United States, ASIO became a backdoor to American intelligence. Upon realising ASIO was compromised, the United States pulled back on the information it shared with Australia.
   Following a strenuous internal audit and a joint Federal Police investigation, George Sadil was accused of being the mole. Sadil had been a Russian interpreter with ASIO for some 25 years and highly classified documents were discovered in his place of residence. Federal Police arrested Sadil in June 1993 and charged him under the Crimes Act 1914 with several espionage and official secrets related offences. However, parts of the case against him collapsed the following year.
   Sadil was committed to trial in March 1994, but the Director of Public Prosecutions decided not to proceed with the more serious espionage-related charges after reviewing the evidence against him. Sadil's profile didn't match that of the mole and investigators were unable to establish any kind of money trail between him and the KGB.
   Sadil pleaded guilty in December 1994 to thirteen charges of removing ASIO documents contrary to his duty, and was sentenced to three months imprisonment. He was subsequently released on a 12 month good behaviour bond. It is believed that another ASIO officer, now retired, is suspected of being the mole but no prosecution attempts have been made.
   There were suggestions that the KGB hadn't actually compromised ASIO, however, in November 2004, former KGB Major-General Oleg Kalugin confirmed to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Four Corners programme that the KGB had in fact infiltrated ASIO in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Sydney 2000 Olympic Games

ASIO began planning for the 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games, held in Sydney, as early as 1995.

Raids on ASIO Central Office, 1973

Further accusations against ASIO were raised by the Attorney-General following a series of bombings from 1963-1970 on the Yugoslav consulate in Australia by Croatian far-right militia. Attorney-General Lionel Murphy alleged that ASIO had withheld information on the group which could have led to preventative measures taken against further bomb attacks (it must be noted, however, that Murphy was a member of the recently sworn-in Labor government, which still held a deep-seated suspicion of ASIO).
On 15 March 1973, Murphy and the Commonwealth Police raided the ASIO offices in Melbourne. While some claim the raid was disastrous, serving little purpose other than to shake-up both ASIO and the Whitlam government, the findings of such investigations were not published.

The Sydney Hilton bombing allegations of conspiracy, 1978

On 13 February 1978, the Sydney Hilton Hotel was bombed, one of the few domestic terrorist incidents on Australian soil. The Hotel was the location for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). Three people in the street were killed – two council workers and a policeman – and several others injured.
Former police officer Terry Griffiths, who was injured in the explosion, provided some evidence that suggested ASIO might have orchestrating the bombing or been aware of the possibility and allowed it to proceed. In 1985, the Director-General of Security issued a specific denial of the allegation. In 1991 the NSW parliament unanimously called for a joint State-Federal inquiry into the Bombing. However, the Federal government vetoed any inquiry.

The Church of Scientology, 1982

The Church of Scientology brought court action against the Director-General, the Attorney-General and the Commonwealth in 1982. It sought declarations that it was no threat to the security of Australia, and claimed the Director-General was acting beyond his powers under the ASIO Act in collecting information regarding the Church, communicating that information to other persons and characterising the Church as a security risk. The case was dismissed.

Anti-terror bungle, 2001

A few weeks after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, mistakes led ASIO to incorrectly raid the home of Bilal Daye and his wife. It has been revealed that the search warrant was for a different address. The couple subsequently sought damages and the embarrassing incident was settled out of court in late 2005, with all material relating to the case being declared strictly confidential.

Detention and removal of Scott Parkin, 2005

In September 2005, the visa of American citizen, Scott Parkin, was cancelled after Director-General of Security, Paul O'Sullivan, issued an adverse security assessment of the visiting peace activist. Parkin was detained in Melbourne and held in custody for five days before being escorted under guard to Los Angeles, where he was informed that he was required to pay the Australian Government $AU11,700 for the cost of his detention and removal. Parkin is challenging the adverse security assessment in the Federal Court.
Prior to his removal, Parkin had given talks on the role of US military contractor Halliburton in the Iraq war and led a small protest outside the Sydney headquarters of Halliburton subsidiary KBR. The Attorney-General at that time, Philip Ruddock, refused to explain the reasons for Parkin's removal, leading to speculation that ASIO had acted under pressure from the United States.This was denied by O'Sullivan before a Senate committee, where he gave evidence that ASIO based its assessment on Parkin's activities in Australia. O'Sullivan refused to answer questions before a later hearing after legal counsel for O'Sullivan appeared to contradict his earlier evidence.

Kidnap and false imprisonment of Izhar ul-Haque, 2007

On 12 November 2007, the Supreme Court of New South Wales dismissed charges brought against a young medical student, Izhar ul-Haque. ASIO and the Australian Federal Police had investigated ul-Haque for allegedly training with Lashkar-e-Toiba in Pakistan, a declared terrorist organisation under the Security Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Act 2002. However, the case against the medical student collapsed when it was revealed that ASIO officers had engaged in improper conduct during the investigation. Justice Michael Adams determined that because ul-Haque was falsely lead to believe that he was legally compelled to comply with the ASIO officers, the conduct of at least one of the investigating ASIO officers constituted false imprisonment and kidnap at common law, and therefore key evidence against ul-Haque was inadmissible.

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